TRANSAMAZON HIGHWAY

COLONIAL PROJECTS AND PORTRAITS OF THE OTHER IN REPORTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELAINE BORGES

Abstract

Based on the reflections of theorists such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Jaques Derrida,
Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, Jacques Rancière and Georges Didi-Huberman, this text
analyzes images of the journalist Elaine Borges published in Santa Catarina press, in a
context in which the military dictatorship invested in infrastructure works in the Amazon
region. With the help of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA),
the military government carried out a colonization process on the banks of the Transamazon
Highway, then under construction. Many settlers left the interior of Santa Catarina in 1972
for the city of Altamira, in Pará, where Borges wrote a series of articles about this
governmental modernity/coloniality project.